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Now here’s a recipe that sings fall! An amazing taste that can’t be better. Your house will smell like pumpkin pie.

Pumpkin Carrot Soup

2 medium onions, diced

1/4 cup oil, your choice (I use grape seed oil)

2 cloves garlic, minced

2 carrots, grated

1 liter water

4 teaspoons chicken or vegetable soup granules

1 small pumpkin, seeded and cut in quarters

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon pepper

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon each of nutmeg and allspice

1/4 to 1/2 cup 35% cream

Sauté onions in hot oil on medium heat until slightly translucent. Add garlic and continue to sauté until completely translucent. Add grated carrots, water and soup granules (or soup stock as desired) and cook for 10 to 15 minutes or until carrots are soft.

Meanwhile, place pumpkin pieces into a microwave safe dish and microwave on high for 10 to 15 minutes. With a large spoon, scoop out the pumpkin from the skin and add to the cooking soup, along with the seasonings (add more to taste as preferred). Simmer for 20 to 30 minutes more or until pumpkin is cooked.

Pumpkin Carrot Soup cooking

Remove from the heat and purée with a stick blender, a food processor or a blender. Stir in cream. Serve hot.

Short prep and cook time – people are busy! Most recipes take 30 minutes or less to make.

No fancy equipment – all you need is a wok pan, a pot, a wok spatula and a cleaver.

Single/four-serving – but easily scalable to feed more or less!

No more boring Chinese Stir Fry!

Available in softcover, epub, mobi, and pdf!
Let me prove to you that ANYONE can cook mind-blowingly delicious and simple Yunnan Cuisine with accessible ingredients.

If you are a beginner: this is the perfect book for you. I will guide you, step by step, from grocery shopping –> prep –> creating inspiring food.

If you are an experienced cook: this is also the perfect book for you. Use my recipes, traditional Yunnan flavors, and methods as inspiration to build upon!

Order this book online , directly from Roz if you’re in China through a Chinese bank transfer or I’ll send to you in mid-July when I’ll be bringing copies to Toronto.
Soft cover book is $22.00 + Shipping or 132 RMB + Shipping

Stir-fry chopped onion is a medium pot or wok. Onions are completely cooked when they are translucent.

Finely chop the stems of the mushrooms, add them to the onions along with several twists of fresh black pepper and salt to taste. Add one cup of hot water, stir and cook for 10 minutes, or until mushrooms are soft. Remove from the heat and leave in the pot or wok. When cooled, use a handheld blender to puree the mixture.

Thinly slice and then roughly chop the tops of the mushrooms. Add the mushrooms and the remaining ingredients to the wok. Stir and simmer for 25-30 minutes or until the mushrooms are well cooked. Stir occasionally and add more water if the soup becomes too thick.

Better than any coffee shop blueberry muffin, these really are ‘to die for’.

To Die For Blueberry Muffins

Makes 12 large muffins

1/3 cup vegetable oil

1 egg

1/3 cup milk

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

3/4 cup white sugar

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 teaspoons baking powder

1 ½ cup fresh blueberries

Crumb Topping:

1/2 cup brown sugar

1/3 cup all-purpose flour

1/4 cup butter softened to room temperature

1 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

To Die For Blueberry Muffins

Preheat oven to 400°F. Grease muffin cups or line with muffin liners.

Place vegetable oil into a 1-cup measuring cup. Add the egg and then enough milk to fill the cup, which is approximately 1/3 cup of milk. Pour into a mixing bowl, add the vanilla and combine well with a fork.

Add flour, sugar, salt and baking powder into the liquid mixture and blend well. Carefully fold in the blueberries. Fill muffin cups right to the top, and sprinkle with crumb topping mixture.

To Make Crumb Topping: Mix together the brown sugar, flour, butter, and cinnamon. Mix with fork, and sprinkle over muffins before baking. Makes 8-9 muffins.

Bake the muffins for 20 to 25 minutes in the preheated oven until done or a toothpick inserted into centre of a muffin comes out clean.

Preheat oven to 350°F. Use parchment paper to line an 8- or 9-inch square pan.

Melt 1/2 cup butter in a saucepan or in microwave. Remove from heat or microwave and stir in sugar, eggs, and vanilla. Beat in the cocoa, flour, salt, and baking powder. Spread batter into prepared pan.

Bake in preheated oven for 25 to 28 minutes. Do not overcook. Almost immediately remove from the pan by lifting it out with the parchment paper. Let cool but not completely for about 10 minutes.

To Make Fudge Icing: Combine butter, cocoa, honey, vanilla and confectioners’ sugar. Frost brownies while they are still warm so the icing will melt and spread easily.

I’m so proud to announce the beautiful illustrated version of my latest cookbook, Roz Weitzman’s World of Chinese Comfort Food. Every recipe photo has been wonderfully hand-drawn and illustrated by my talented Illustrator, Nancy Szostak.

All the same book of 70 Chinese Comfort Food recipes but with illustrations instead of photos.

Please take a moment to have a look at the ebook at the Lulu website and even write a brief review.

Since I live in China, you might wonder what I eat everyday. My meals have changed a lot over the 8 years I’ve been here. Since I learned how to cook Chinese, my meals have gotten more healthy and more consistently Chinese.

Well my breakfast resists the change. I can’t tolerate noodles cooked in spicy sauce, or garlicy food in the morning. I guess that’s a habit I’m not likely to break any time in the near future. It consists of a mug or two of decaffeinated coffee, sometimes it’s instant and sometimes it’s perked, along with a toasted home made roll or quarter of GuanDu BaBa cut in half through the centre, and spread with New Zealand butter. Often I eat it plain; periodically I top the toast with jam, most often Carrefour-brand blueberry or raspberry jam. Sometimes it’s topped with mozarella or cheddar cheese and melted in my ‘easy-bake’ oven.

GuanDu BaBa for Breakfast

I call it my easy-bake because ovens are not usually built in here…most often if you want an oven you buy a small, tabletop oven which is a little larger than a toaster oven with a higher baking temperature too.

In addition to wanting a healthier diet, I live in a third-tier city, not very foreign-food friendly. So after buying pasta in a variety of shapes, there’s not much else. Fortunately dairy products have become a bigger part of the Chinese diet, so butter, and cheeses are available in small quantities, even in this city.

Lunches and dinners are almost always Chinese food. Noodles, soups, and vegetables of all kinds, and served cooked and fresh are a daily part of my diet. Some dish with a small portion of meat for lunch, and vegetables, usually fresh for dinner.

Tonight I switched things around and had a cucumber salad for lunch and cooked this stir-fry for dinner. I love this combination in noodles and ofter change the main veggie for something different….broccoli, Chinese cabbage, usually a green one. And I change the noodles too…Udon, rice, wheat, sweet potato or vermicelli noodles; sometimes fresh, sometimes dried.

The secret to a good stir-fry is in cutting all ingredients very thin so that they cook quickly, and using a hot wok, keeping it all moving fast so as not to burn the dish! A gas stove helps to control the heat very finely and that can also aid in cooking without burning or making the ingredients soggy.

So here you have it, my dinner tonight…Noodle Stir-Fry with Snow Peas and Meat. This dish gets it’s awesome flavours from the traditional mix of ginger, garlic, green onion, Chinese Rice Cooking Wine, and soy sauce. Try it for dinner and I hope you will enjoy!

Noodle Stir-Fry with Snow Peas and Meat

Ingredients for Noodle Stir-Fry

Serves 2

1 chicken breast or ¼ pound pork tenderloin, very finely sliced

2 teaspoon Chinese rice cooking wine

4 teaspoons minced garlic, divided

4 teaspoons minced ginger, divided

1 tablespoon cornstarch

6 tablespoons oil, divided

2 beaten eggs

4 tablespoons soy sauce, divided

1 teaspoon fresh chopped ginger

4 green onions, cut in 1-inch pieces

½ cucumber, finely sliced (optional)

1 cup snowpeas

1 teaspoon Chinese chicken bouillon granules*

2 servings fresh noodles (Udon, rice or wheat) allowed to soak in hot water for 15 minutes and then drained

½ cup fresh chopped cilantro

1 teaspoon sesame oil

Mix the finely shredded meat with rice wine, half of the garlic and ginger, and the cornstarch and allow the mixture to marinate for 15 minutes.

marinating pork with ginger, garlic, rice wine and cornstarch

Heat the wok, add 2 tablespoons oil, and wait for it to heat. Stir-fry the eggs and break into small bits. Set them aside.

Heat the wok, add remaining 2 tablespoons oil, and wait for it to heat. Stir-fry the chicken or pork with the sauce. Add 2 tablespoons of soy sauce. Remove and set aside together with the eggs.

Clean and dry the wok. Then heat the wok, add 2 tablespoons oil, and wait for it to heat. Stir-fry the green onion and the remaining ginger and garlic to release their fragrance. Add the snow peas and cucumber with bouillon granules, and 2 tablespoons soy sauce until brightly coloured and still crunchy.

Stir in noodles and heat for another 1-2 minutes on low heat. Add more soy sauce to taste and the fresh chopped cilantro. Mix the ingredients together thoroughly while keeping the heat on low for another minute. Transfer to a platter and serve hot.